Real-time stock quotes back on Yahoo

Getting free, up to the minute stock quotes has been a near impossibility online for the past couple of years.

Because the information is proprietary, investors could only see what their stocks traded for on a delay – usually of around 20 minutes.

Today, Yahoo Inc. put and end to the inconvenience. Users of its Finance area can now get free, real-time quotes, making the Sunnyvale Web portal the only place online to do so (or so it says).

The data comes via a deal with BATS Trading, an independent exchange. While its information doesn’t exactly dovetail with the quotes other bigger exchanges would provide for individual stocks, BATS is said to be pretty close.